What Happened to Our Fighting Spirit?

Blyth must be going soft. Our forerunners did not accept arbitrary decisions of others. They either fought them or ignored their detractors and went ahead with what they thought was right.

Today, we are faced with an arbitrary and prejudicial decision which will rob this village of its school. We have raised our objections respectfully and politely. We’ve presented well documented arguments against the decision by a group of outsiders to make this assault on OUR COMMUNITY. The ARC committee did an enormous amount of research and solid work.

In return, we have been ignored. We have been fed official lies and subterfuge. We have been subjected to a make-believe consultation process which was rigged against us before we began.

Surely it is time that we stop being polite. Time that we begin to treat the Avon Maitland District School Board with the contempt that they so richly deserve. Time that we take some action to embarrass them and make them at least extremely uncomfortable, if not repentant. Time to report their destructive ways to the Minister of Education who needs to understand what the provincial policy on school accommodation has unleashed on rural communities across this entire province and on this community in particular.

We sat idly by when amalgamation was forced on us a few years ago even though 99% of the community opposed the process. The adventure increased our costs, diluted our representation on municipal council, and produced no discernable advantages. It is too late to go back on that fiasco. We lost on that one.

In this case, we already know that there are no advantages to this change in school arrangements, and that we in Blyth are facing serious and irreparable damage to our children and our community if it is implemented. If ever there was a reason for protest, this is surely one of them.

Let's not stand there. Do something!

Brock Vodden
http://allaboutblyth.blogspot.com/

More About the Repository of Blyth History

The best source of general information about our collection is the publication of the Huron County Historical Society titled "Huron Historical Notes 2007: Repository of Blyth History" 47 pp.

The Society has reprinted this publication and copies are available from The Citizen weekly newspaper office in Blyth as well as the Huron County Museum in Goderich. They cost $8.00.

Our repository began as a simple act of listing the names of the Blyth people we knew or knew about. Then we began adding information about them. Then came some pictures. Then people began contributing items and more information. We tried to put some time boundaries on the collection: "We'll focus on 1850 to 1900!" we declared. But then we received a whole box of school information which came close to the present time.

Finally, we dropped all the boundaries and opened the collection process to "everything about Blyth". As we have said many times, one persons comment to us told us that we were onto something very important. This lady told us that her family had been in the Blyth area from the beginning, had contributed to the growth and development of the village in a low key way, and yet they were never mentioned in any of the histories or the stories about the village.

This changed our focus to something like "NO BLYTH FAMILY LEFT BEHIND!"

Our goal now is to be able to respond to the request of any descendant of persons who ever lived in or around Blyth with a significant amount of information. We are getting very closer to achieving that goal, but there is more information needed. We appeal to local residents, former residents, and others who know something about Blyth to come forward with "stuff". We accept donations, we scan or copy items that you want to keep, handwritten family stories also welcome.

Recent discoveries of old Blyth Standards, (back to 1894) when we get a chance to analyze all of them, will provide us with an enormous amount of "new" old information which we assumed would never be found. (Many of these papers are off being microfilmed and digitized.)

We receive contacts from far and wide requesting family and other information about the old days of Blyth. We have visitors, too, who come to see the collection, to seek specific information, and to bring their information to us to fill in the gaps we have. These people have come from across Ontario and Canada, and some from USA are planning to visit us.

The size and scope of the collection is surpising to us as well as to visitors when we consider the small population of the place. It consists of many three-ring binders (about 150), many file cards (approx. 10,000), a collection of maps of Blyth showing the entire village and separate maps of the surveys of various parts of the village, close to 15 GB of computer information, along with a few artifacts, the largest of which is an antique portable typewriter which belonged to the publisher of the Blyth Standard in 1894 to 1906.

The question is constantly in our minds as to where we are going to put this collection when we are no longer able to work at it. We want it to be in a safe place where it will be looked after well, where it will (ideally) continue to grow, and where it is accessible to people doing research on the village or its families, and in a way that makes it easy to find the information being sought.

There are such places, but the best of them are full and do not have the space. Some places have the space, but do not instill confidence that material will be looked after properly. There are places which could contain this collection along with other Blyth material, but there is no plan for staffing it and maintaining that kind of facility.

In the meantime, we carry on collecting, recording, filing, researching, answering questions, asking more questions, and most of the time enjoying it all to the full.

We think every community should have such a collection. It provides services that no history book, no museum, and no county archive could (or should) provide.

Perhaps what we need is a facility to accommodate all of our community collections.

Please leave comments or write to hbvodden@ezlink.on.ca

Lucy in the sky is not my cousin

I have it on good authority from my friend Linda that Lucy Vodden, who inspired John Lennon's famous song, is not related to my Voddens.

Not being a fan of the Beatles, I needed one of my sons to explain the story to me.

Caught in the Act – Almost!

It’s a little known fact that Blyth once harboured a gang of gun-slinging desperadoes. Daily gun battles took place in the back streets, the church sheds, sometimes even on main street. Many households in the village were guilty of harbouring these unconvicted mobsters. Why, they even provided funds to support their wicked ways.

I have never publicly admitted this before, but now that I am getting close to 75 years of age, it’s time to lift this terrible burden from - well, maybe not from my chest, but from my trigger finger. Yes, I was one of them. I was almost caught, but through my natural ability to think on my feet, I managed to avoid arrest.

This took place in the early 1940s. The weapon of choice among these gangsters was the cap gun. The ammunition was rolls of red caps that fit into the cap gun. Each time you pulled the trigger, the hammer would hit a little black circle of explosive, producing a bang remotely similar to that coming from a small hand gun, but not nearly as loud. These cap guns could be purchased at the “five and dime” in Wingham, and the caps could be purchased locally in a couple of stores.

Then the cap guns were banned.

I’m not sure how or why the ban took place, but word got out that the firing of cap guns was not to be tolerated in Blyth. There was no public announcement of this, as far as I know, and no by-law passed by the village council. It was a word of mouth intimation which was a tried and true small town broadcast technique for spreading rumours, good and bad news, as well as rules of behaviour and decorum.

The boys of the village took the message with a grain of salt. The lure of the crackle of cap gunfire was too strong to make them want to lay down their arms. What they did was conceal their weapons whenever the police constable was close by, and go elsewhere to wage their battles.

As with the gunslingers in the western movies, I became vulnerable when I ran out of ammunition. I headed for the store which sold the ammo. I was about to ask for a roll of caps, when I happened to notice, sitting on a low chair behind the counter to my left, Constable John Cowan. I could see only the top half of his face and his eyes were looking straight at me. I felt the blood rushing to my face. The storekeeper was also staring at me, waiting for me to say what I wanted. I was mulling over my options. What I really wanted to do was disappear both physically and from the memory of the people staring at me. No, disappearance was not an option.

I spoke.

“An eraser,” I said. “I want a Pink Pearl Eraser.” I added the last phrase, cleverly giving the impression that this purchase had been carefully thought through hours ago , and the decision was made that not just any eraser would meet my needs. It had to be a Pink Pearl.

I got the eraser, I gave my dime, I got the nickel change and I got out of there, taking only a moment to glance in the direction of the Policeman. I could tell by the hint of a smile on his face that he had no idea of what my real intentions were.

What The Avon Maitland School Board Has Taught Us

Blyth Public and Continuation School

Built 1896

This was our school back in the good old days. We had our own school board of local people who were elected each year. They were from all walks of life: merchants, preachers, doctors, labourers, gentlemen (retired folks), etc..We knew all of them personally and they knew us. Heck, they even knew most of the students.

When we wanted to indicate that we liked or disliked their decisions, we would tell them so when we met them at the post office or at the ball game. Once in a while, but rarely, a big issue would come up and a group of citizens would go as a delegation to a school board meeting and have their say.

The public school usually had two teachers for grades one to eight - sometimes three. The Continuation School had three teachers who taught all the subjects required for grades nine to twelve. Those who wanted to go further had to go to Clinton Collegiate Institute for their Grade Thirteen or "Upper School".

It was our school, and it was a good school. Two of our Grade 8 students in the 1940s happened to move to a big city in the same year. In Grade 9 in that new school they placed first and second in overall marks above all the students in that grade. They attribute their achievement to the grounding they received in Blyth Public School.

Along the way we lost our school board, then we lost our representative on the later school boards. They say that we have a representative on AMDSB, but she doesn't talk to us and few know who she is. Now we are about to lose our school. The present school board has turned against us on advice of their senior employees who have decided that although we used to run our own schools successfully, we are not smart enough now even to have an opinion about how our children are to be educated.

If AMDSB were to be picked up by aliens from another planet (what a dream!), Blyth could actually manage and maintain its own school and educate its own children. The education requirements are different than they were in 1896 and 1946, but we have learned a thing or two as well. The advantage we would have is that we could hire real educators who know and value our community and we would not require those many layers of administration overhead which have made things so costly and complicated that they can't afford the money or the time to look after our children and community properly.

We won't be setting up our own school any time soon, but I am betting that this community is going to remember what AMDSB did to us and our community.

I support public non-sectarian education and when I see the public board behaving so badly, I become very angry and disappointed. They are the kind of board that is supposed to serve the whole community.

Happy Canada Day!

On this July 1, Canada Day, we see and hear many expressions of pride in our great country.

What impresses me, also, is the fact that through the entire year, we hear people comment on what a great country we live in and how proud we are of our past and present and our aspirations for the future. We acknowledge that life in general and the life of any country - no matter how great - has its ups and downs, its challenges and its difficult transitions. Despite these, we never lose the sense of pride and hope. For each of us there is a personal list of qualities and facts on which we base our pride for Canada.

On this day, I take a moment to identify the particular things that stand out in my mind as sources of my pride. They are as follows (not in any special order):

1. We are a caring society.
2. We have in our constitution a Charter of Rights and Freedoms which stands as an example to the world.
3. We have an excellent health care system.
4. Our parliamentary system allows for the smooth transition of power when required following an election, and most of our politicians treat each other, even their opponents, with respect most of the time.
5. We are a pluralistic society which treats people equally most of the time without regard to religious beliefs, race, country of origin, gender, and sexual orientation.
6. We are a society which recognizes its shortcomings and is always working to improve in areas such as human rights, environmental improvements, economic progress, civility among political adversaries.
7. We resisted pressure towards becoming involved in the unnecessary Iraq war.
8. We are firm in our resolve to withdraw from the combat arena in Afganistan, which has not contributed to the stabilization of that country, and which has killed many Canadians.